You may also want to look into enabling keyboard shortcuts. Depending on your style of computing (mouse-heavy vs. keyboard-heavy usage), you can save a ton of time with those shortcuts. I use shortcuts and for me to enter a new to-do, it's the following steps:

While the number of "tabs" you hit will depend on how many columns you have visible, this is a ridiculously quick way to enter new tasks. It takes me about five seconds to enter a new to-do, and most of that is spent typing out the actual to-do name.